In known dummy bars such as that described in DE-OS 28 09 844, several rows of contact elements are arranged in a staggered distribution next to one another on a flexible sheet of metal. The contact elements have a trapezoidal shape or are skewed to form a bend-free area of overlap and are attached to the sheet metal surface with a small attachment surface.
This prior art dummy bar has the following disadvantages: the metal sheet is only freely bendable in the narrow overlapping areas, and in these areas, notch tensions occur. For this reason the dummy bar is not suited to strand guides with a small radius of curvature. With each contact of the driven rollers of the strand guide with an overlapping region, an overturning moment occurs because of the smaller attachment surfaces of the contact elements which puts too severe a load on their points of attachment.
It is one object of the invention to create a simple, operationally safe dummy bar which is especially suited for continuous casting machines for thin steel strips with a small radius of curvature.
Another object of the invention is to avoid overturning moments in the contact elements and notch tensions.